{"id":447920,"date":"2026-02-27T04:55:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T04:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/447920\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T04:55:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T04:55:12","slug":"will-i-ever-be-able-to-race-at-a-high-level-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/447920\/","title":{"rendered":"Will I ever be able to race at a high level again?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Damien Touz\u00e9<\/a>, a rider for Cofidis<\/a> who took part in the Tour de France last summer, may be forced to end his career following a crash at the Tour of Oman. The French rider sustained very serious injuries which have not only kept him in the Middle East for an extensive period of time; but also an intestine perforation that is keeping him in the hospital over two weeks after the crash. The former World Tour rider shares serious concerns also over the speeds that the peloton races at currently and how it affects the gravity of the crashes.Touz\u00e9 start off his 2026 season at the Cl\u00e0ssica Comunitat Valenciana and then made the trip to Oman in early February to race the Muscat Classic and Tour of Oman. During stage 4<\/a>, he crashed at high speed, suffering a fractured femur, ruptured spleen and several injuries in his legs as a result of hitting a guardrail at high speed.<\/p>\n

However perhaps the worst of the injuries was only diagnosed after he was given permission to leave the hospital in Oman and return to Europe. \u201cAt first they didn\u2019t realize I had a hole in my intestine. They hadn\u2019t closed the abdominal wall; it was like I\u2019d been torn open,” Touz\u00e9 said in an interview with Ouest-France.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The story might not have a happy ending. The 29-year old’s injuries might be too severe to allow him to return to professional cycling: \u201cWill I ever be able to race at a high level again? We don\u2019t know that yet,” he admit to the microphone of RTBF.<\/p>\n

Crashes made worst due to the speed\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is a time of uncertainty for another pro rider who is suffering the consequences of a peloton that is increasingly seeing more and more high-speed crashes, with high consequences. Virtually every rider at the very top, at this point, has suffered a grave injury in recent years; and the same continues to happen to riders at all levels of professional cycling.<\/p>\n

Touz\u00e9 is not oblivious to the increase in risks for doing the same job in the peloton. “In recent years, the number of crashes in these races \u2014 which are normally the safest \u2014 has increased. The tension is really intense, and since the start of the year we\u2019ve seen at least one big crash in every race,” he argues.<\/p>\n

The five-time Grand Tour participant also believes that the technological evolution of the bikes in the peloton is seeing the riders race at such an increasingly high speed that the falls are inevitably going to have bigger consequences simultaneously:<\/p>\n

“The bikes\u2026 I feel like they don\u2019t suit us anymore. They\u2019re like a piece of wood. You can easily ride 60 km\/h on the flat, boxed in behind someone\u2019s wheel. So the slightest impact you get becomes a hundred times bigger for us”.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Damien Touz\u00e9, a rider for Cofidis who took part in the Tour de France last summer, may be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[109039,4985,162444,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-447920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cofidis","tag-cycling","tag-damien-touze","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}